JR Transmitters

[Andy Boylett]

The danger of not knowing.....I nearly made an expensive mistake yesterday.

I have been watching a JR transmitter for sale on Ebay and I was a little interested. I was thinking of bidding for it. It was a brand new, hardly used JR DSX12. The new price of these is well over £1000 and this one was listed at £500. A few hours before the auction ended and luckily before I bid, I had another look in detail at the listing. The title was DSX12 and the detail said DSX12. However, when I enlarged the photo and looked at it the logo on the front did not look the same as the DSX12 on the McGreggor site here....http://www.macgregor.co.uk/jrpropo/dsx12.htm You can see it says DSX12.

I searched the net and found this picture http://www.jrradios.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=JRP1200. This is exactly the same transmitter but has the logo "12x 2.4". If you look at the manual for either of these transmitters it is identical.

Now those of you with more experience than me may have known what the issue was. I didn't but was starting to smell a rat....why was this nearly new set so cheap? I called JR McGreggor in the UK. They said the transmitters are identical except for the DSX12 trasmits at a power of 100mw and the "12x 2.4" transmits at a power of 1000mw (or 1 watt). The DSX12 is the special CE labelled version with a lower power to meet the UK regulations. If you use the high power one while stood next to others using the lower power ones you may cause a big issue, as well as being illegal.

I guess the guy selling this bought it in the USA then realised his mistake when back in the UK

Was this very subtle difference in the logos common knowledge to everyone?

[Paul Savage 1568]

It is now Andy... But I wouldn't be suprised if someone less vigilant than you buys it without realising the implications. I wouldn't have known the difference. I wonder if there are any other Futaba or JR radios out there that for all intents and purposes look identical to our U.K and Europe versions.

What a bit of a mine field of confusion the advent of 2.4 has become in general and why do the americans feel they need so much additional broadcasting power than we do. It was all so much easier to grasp when Europe had our 35 Meg, the Americans had their 72 Meg and China
hadn't managed to flood every market with their offerings.

Moral of the story seems to be to buy from a reputable UK retailer and all should be fine and always check that it has a genuine CE Approved
label on it.